Intel said it worked in collaboration with Hollywood and Bollywood studios as well as content distributors such as CinemaNow, Sonic Solutions, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution to create a protected environment for the distribution, storage and playback of premium content. This is expected to prompt content owners and video services to release more movies in high definition, according to Intel. Commercial distribution of HD premium content using the Intel Insider technology is expected to begin during the first quarter of this year, the company said.

The new devices also include a technology called Quick Sync Video, a built-in hardware acceleration that speeds up editing and sharing video, Intel said. The company said its Core i3, i5 and i7 processors also feature version 2.0 of Intel Turbo Boost technology, which automatically reallocates processor core and processor graphics resources to accelerate performance.

In all, Intel launched more than 20 processors, wireless adapters and chipsets on the eve of CES. These new products are expected to be incorporated into more than 500 laptop and desktop PC designs in the next year, according to Intel. Second-generation quad-core Core devices will be available Jan. 9, with dual-core versions coming next month, Intel said.

AMD, meanwhile, officially launched the first new chips that it terms accelerated processing units (APUs). The Fusion family of APUs are multi-core CPUs that integrate a DirectX 11-capable discrete-level graphics and parallel processing engine, a dedicated high-definition video acceleration block and a high-speed bus that speeds data across the differing types of processor cores within the design, according to the company.

AMD has previously disclosed many details of the Fusion APU architecture, codenamed Llano, including a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco last February.

On Wednesday, AMD said new desktop PCs, notebooks and HD netbooks are now available based on Fusion APUs and that tablets and embedded designs based on the chips are expected to be available later in the first quarter. The company said it expects OEMs including Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba to announce plans to deliver Fusion APU-based systems.

In a statement, Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of the AMD Products Group, described Fusion APUs as a major advancement in processing. "In one major step, we enable users to experience HD everywhere as well as personal supercomputing capabilities in notebooks that can deliver all-day battery life," he said. "It's a new category, a new approach, and opens up exciting new experiences for consumers."

I think another important fact to remember is that the programming and execution models are quite different for a CPU and a GPU. CPU is still a much more sequential than GPU code which is massively parallel.

' "offer security features to protect 1080p HD content for streaming applications." People will find workarounds for these kinda protection in matter of days, after the release. IMO this is pointless.'
You have to consider this issue from their side to understand the motivation. It's really just a pitch directly to the content creators since Intel is the one that created HDCP and then charges everyone US1000+ for device key sets. The only way they can get more people to adopt and pay up is to offer some benefit and that means making more content readily available.

@Luting, the reason why they didnt do it before is quite simple. CPUs x86 based systems, GPUs fpga based systems. GPUs became more complex and hard to code than CPUs. However as ARM is pushing hard, intel/amd needs to find out different approach and solutions to get business back. thats the reason why we see different approaches
Future of computing is in FPGA where you can embed hundreds of processor into one single chip.

Two observation:
Firstly, it has been long time that even low end PC/laptop will have graphic accelerator. Don't know why takes so long for AMD/INTEL to realize that.
Secondly, if GPU is already integrated into CPU, why not simply expand CPU instruction to support all GPU instructions? This will make programming model a lot simpler. Putting two cores in one die only solves cost & power issue, not programming issue.

It is very important for the CPU vendors to actullay integarate the GPU's into the main processors. These new CPU's will definitely bring down the total cost of complete multimedia PC with good graphics. But what is the imapct of these products on the sales of Nvidia or ATi.